Bioshock: Olympus Heights
by williamcousteau
Summary: After the vacuum left by Sofia Lamb, the inhabitants of Olympus Heights could finally come out of hiding and rebuild the city. Will they cure the Splicers left behind, or will they fall into the same, destructive habits? Will another man or woman step up to the be the "Ruler of Rapture"?
1. Survival

**Introduction**

The entire city of Rapture shook. Around the terrified inhabitants, televisions fell to the ground and smashed, bookshelves toppled and several children scream in alarm.  
Emily looked over at Grace, who was holding her record player close to her chest, murmuring a prayer.  
"That'll be Sofia leaving, I'd say," Grace eventually said, closing her eyes.  
"Do you think Delta managed to find Eleanor?" Emily asked, trying to take her mind off the roar coming from the edge of the city.  
Grace only nodded. "It's safe to say that we've seen the last of Sofia Lamb and hopefully, the last of her religion. Bad news, that was."  
The shaking eventually stopped, and doors opened through the hallways. Families met each other, gripping each other in grateful embraces. They had survived. The inhabitants of Olympus Heights had survived, and were most likely the only sane people remaining.

The Hypnotize plasmid flowed through the air-ducts, the green, mist-like substance settling around the sobbing or cackling Splicers, seeping into their skulls.  
Over the intercom, a firm voice spoke throughout the entire city.  
"Attention: All Splicers," the female voice began, pausing as the drug-abused population cracked their heads towards the speakers and televisions. "Rapture will begin anew, with your help. Any unnecessary debris that cannot be fixed will go to Ryan's Waste Disposal, the rest will be repaired. If any fires are spotted, extinguish them. If any leaks are seen, notify the nearest Big Daddy. More announcements to follow. Remember, the Rapture Rebuild is rebuilding our future."

**Chapter 1 - John**

It wasn't easy, cleaning out Mercury Suits and the rest of Olympus Heights, John remembered as he scrubbed the walls of Apollo Square. The sane population were too skittish to go far from the apartment complex, with good reason. The splicers, while hypnotized with the Plasmid, still had a chance of breaking the mind-control if they saw a non-drug deformed person. Hypnotize needed to be administered throughout the city through the vents at regular intervals, but what if there was a malfunction?  
Hell, John didn't even like doing it, but if they were working on quarantining areas close to to the complex so they could work on making it livable.  
Tenenbaum was working relentlessly in her apartment to figure out how to make ADAM less abusive to the self and stop the addiction. That way, the workers could better protect themselves.  
John propped himself up against the now-clean wall and looked around him. His team had already cleared the Square and surrounding buildings of Splicers and corpses.  
The mayor had taken down Andrew Ryan's public hanging platforms.

He wasn't even sure how they all survived the waves and waves of attacks, John thought to himself, making his way back through the deserted Tram tunnel.  
The people of Athena's Glory weren't big on splicing to begin with, so they had that advantage. The entrance also had many Security Bots and Cameras, so that also helped a great deal.  
John nodded in greeting to another working heading to the Square to take over while he took his lunch break.  
Things were different, now, the intercom kept saying, and it was true.  
Andrew Ryan's lust for money and control was the cause of the first Civil War, and the religious ramblings of Sofia Lamb had the Splicers following her mindlessly, but also stopped the people of Olympus Heights from revealing themselves to her.  
"It's going to end badly," the mayor said in one of their first meetings as a group after reading her book, _Unity and Metamorphosis_. "She is only after power and it will end, soon. We simply need to wait for the rift in power, and we'll do things the right way, I promise you." His speech was one of the reasons that many people stayed with Olympus Heights and began to work as a group.  
"Just like on the surface," John said to himself as he emerged from the tunnel and was met with a Big Daddy working on the repairs on one of the glass walls. It was strange, seeing them without the ever-present Little Sisters.  
Tenenbaum told them that she had altered the armored men so that they wouldn't need Little Sisters anymore, but whenever one was close, everybody felt depressed and a sense of loss. It was as if it was projecting its feelings, even if it was subconscious.


	2. The Mayor

**Chapter 2 - Thomas**

Thomas Dervall sat in his office, staring out at the undersea buildings around him.  
His office and home, was situated in Fontaine's old apartment. It was strange, living in a place that once housed such a tyrant, but with tidy-up and a paint-job it looked nice: inviting, even.  
He jolted a little as the phone on his desk rang.  
"Dervall," he answered shortly, calming his heart. He half-expected every call to be informing him that the Splicers had broken through the blockades and were ruining everything they had accomplished.  
"This is Brigid," a thick German accented voice said.  
Damn, he cursed to himself. That damned Tenenbaum woman. All the things she had done, and now she was a respected member of their group? At least she was doing what she could to make up for it now, he supposed.  
"Can we meet?" She asked. He heard her breathe out, knowing that she was chugging back the cigarets she always clung to.  
Thomas agreed and hung up the phone, rubbing his tired eyes.

It wasn't too long ago that they had put her on trial for the crimes she had committed.  
After all of the evidence had been put in front of her, she simply looked at it and said, "I know that I have committed unacceptable crimes, but the little girls awoke something in me, something I did not know even existed. I do not want ADAM to be a destructive force anymore, I want it to help the city, like it should have done. I want to help."  
That was all she said, in the entire trial.  
Some people vouched for her, saying that they had picked up random conversations between her and Jack, and one even heard everything she had said to Subject Delta.  
It came to a vote, and she was allowed to stay in Olympus Heights.

He arrived at the Central Square Bistro, where the more important people went to discuss matters regarding Rapture (people in politics, on the Repair Board and so on).  
Brigid Tenenbaum was already sitting, sipping a green cocktail.  
"Those things'll kill you, you know," Thomas said, nodding to the cigaret in her other hand.  
"And yet, I am still alive. In Rapture, of all places," Brigid laughed humorlessly.  
Thomas waved the waitress over and ordered a beer.  
"What did you bring me here for, Tenenbaum?" Thomas asked wearily. He could feel a migraine coming along. Rebuilding Rapture was proving harder than he first thought.  
Brigid took a long drag on her cigaret and blew the smoke out slowly, drawing out the time. Thomas wriggled his foot impatiently, looking up sharply as the waitress came over with his beer.  
"I have ADAM-related news," Brigid said and stared at the waitress until she walked away. When she was out of sight, the geneticist continued. "I have found a way to make it so that the Plasmids do not have any side effects."  
Thomas paused, his heart seemed to stop. "You're not yankin' my chain?" He asked, trying to keep his emotions down. As mayor, he couldn't exactly be jumping around the Bistro in excitement.  
Tenenbaum nodded with just the hint of a smile. You never knew exactly what she was thinking, that woman. Her eyes seemed full of sadness and guilt for what she had done, but other than that, she seemed to be a blank canvas.  
"I could kiss you," Thomas eventually said gruffly, taking a swig of beer in celebration. "What about reversing the damage that's already done to those poor buggers?" He nodded his head towards the rest of Rapture, to the Splicers cleaning up the place.  
Brigid shook her head. "I'm afraid I cannot see any way to reverse it yet. Give me time." With that, she finished her drink and stood, her heels clacking along the wooden floor.

"We can use Plasmids," Thomas's Combat Adviser, Myles said in disbelief, leaning back in his chair.  
The two of them were sitting in Myles' apartment in the Mercury Suits, looking over the repair reports and Splicer sightings.  
After a long silence, Myles whistled and rubbed a hand over his face.  
"Did you know that my wife committed suicide?" He eventually asked, his face pained as he picked up an archived poster of Telekinesis Plasmid.  
"I'm sorry, I didn't know that," Thomas said apologetically.  
His Combat Advisor shook his head, filing the poster away again after looking it over in disgust. "We didn't realize what those damned things were doing to her. By the time I found out about the mental side effects, it was too late. I tried to help, I really did."  
At this, his voice grew lower and his eyes closed, as if remembering something.  
"'You just need to lay off the Plasmids for a while,' I told her, 'It'll be fine.'"  
"She had the withdrawals," Thomas nodded, his heart growing heavy. His teenage son went through the same thing. Nobody survives the withdrawals.  
"I found her the next day, after work, the apartment trashed. She was lying in the bathtub with a gun in her hand and her brains all over the wall."  
"It was a bad time," Thomas told him, putting a hand on Myles' shoulder.  
Myles cleared his throat and straightened his back. Clearly, the deep and meaningful conversation was over. "Yes, it was. Do we trust this Tenenbaum woman?"  
Thomas thought for a moment. Could they really trust her?  
"If we can trust her," Myles started, looking down at the map of the nearby buildings and the points that marked the Splicer sightings, "then we need volunteers. We need to arm them with weapons and Plasmids, and we need to strike."


	3. Arcadia

**Chapter 3 - Andrea**

Andrea stood amongst nine other Clearers, checking her pack to make sure she had all of the necessary tools: health packs, EVE, a gun, a knife and a radio.  
"Let's clear Arcadia," her leader ordered, and they all lifted the masks over their faces, checking the filter gage. They didn't want to be breathing in the same, Hypnotic Plasmid as the Splicers, after all.  
They jogged through the glass tunnel, hearing the bulkhead door slide shut behind them. Andrea was behind the leader, keeping her Electro Bolt Plasmid at the ready. The moved in a triangular formation, with the leader at the front, bearing both a Telekinesis Plasmid and a pistol. Having both as weapons was an honor. You had to _earn _that right.  
Next, was Andrea. She had a gun in her bag, but that was only a last resort. She was a Stunner, which meant she only needed to stun the Splicer. There were two Stunners in each team of Clearers, and the rest had the weaponry, not given the right to have a Plasmid yet.  
They were, of course, not encouraged to kill anybody unless completely necessary: Brigid Tenenbaum believed that there would eventually be a way to cure them. Andrea couldn't imagine killing so many Splicers, only to find out that they would be cured the next day.  
As they passed through, one of the members of the team, a Noter, took photographs of the areas, noting on the progress of the repairs and overall activity.  
The leader motioned towards a pile of bodies in the corner of the room, next to a Gatherers Garden machine and Andrea nodded, charging up on the Electro Bolt. Taking a deep breath, she pointed her fingertips towards the corpses and released strong bolts, strong enough so that the bodies soon began to catch on fire. The Noter quickly wrote down where the bodies where: they'd be transported to the disposal basement by the Splicers after they had safely returned home. Two others ran around the area, picking up EVE, hacking the vending machines to take the items inside.  
Andrea followed the leader as they passed through another bulkhead and came to the pillars of Arcadia. As they all came to a stop, he turned around.  
"Get ready," he said to her, then to the others in a hushed tone, "All right team, we've reached Arcadia. Be sure to watch out for any of The Saturnine or any other Splicer. We're here to do some short recon and gathering, but don't be too focused on the items. Keep your head up. Teams of two, go!" With that, they quickly, silently scattered through the trees.  
Andrea stayed behind and the leader looked at her with an unreadable expression behind his mask.  
"Let's do this," she said with a grim smile and ran ahead, her thin shoes padding through the long grass. Behind her, the leader lifted several bodies with Telekinesis and moved them into one pile, waiting to be burned.  
A short, quiet beep sounded from Andrea's bag, and she picked it up.  
"Go," she said shortly, looking around as she ducked behind a tree.  
"I've found a cave," she heard the Noter, Carl say. "I'm going in."  
"Don't-" she began to say, and cursed when the radio crackled. He had gone out of signal.  
Cursing again, she gave the leader a long look, silently asking what to do. After a moment's hesitation, they both ran towards the direction Carl had gone in.  
Ducking trees and jumping over streams, they eventually came to a panting stop outside the mouth of a cave.  
Andrea flexed her Plasmid hand and the leader checked his pistol, then, they both stepped into the mouth of the cave.

It was dark, and there was water dripping from the ceiling. Inside, was a small pond and a shrine in the middle with random bits of everyday life adorning the rock: a comb, an empty EVE hypo, a ruined book and a pep bar. No sign of Carl.  
Andrea turned and was about to speak, when she felt the air around her shiver and saw red mist appear from nothing.  
Shouting, she shocked the air the mist was coming from, pushing the leader to the ground.  
With a furious and pained scream, a white-clothed figure fell to the ground, writhing. His wooden mask dropped from his face, revealing a scarred and disfigured face.  
"Houdini," she cried, shocking him again, hoping it would be enough to keep him from teleporting.  
"I got this," leader said, standing up beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. He raised the pistol and shot the Splicer right in the head. The writhing abruptly stopped and blood pooled underneath him.  
Andrea spun around, questions about to fly from her mouth, when she was stopped by him. He was pointing to a body in the corner with a slit throat.  
"It's Carl," he said softly, walking over closed Carl's eyes. He then picked the still-warm body up and walked out of the cave. He would be buried in the center of Arcadia.  
"Fucking Splicers," Andrea said sadly and followed him. She couldn't wait till they got back to Olympus Heights.


	4. The Vote

**Chapter 4 - John**

It sounded as though the Plasmid might be wearing off, John thought to himself grimly. He had been tossing and turning all night, but he could hear the faint shrieks of Splicers in another building. That was the downfall to being on one of the lower levels: you could hear almost everything.  
In the morning, a public announcement sounded through the apartment complex. "Attention: Olympus Heights. Mayor Thomas has called a meeting. Will all Rapture citizens please converge in the square. Thank you."  
John groaned and shuffled down the stairs and pushed the double doors open. Other bleary-eyed inhabitants were looking at each other in tired fear and confusion. It looked like they too had been kept up the entire night. A good three hundred people stood in the square, many still in their pajamas. At the front on a small podium, stood the mayor.  
"Good morning folks," Thomas said in a strained voice he tried to pass as cheery. "Quite a ruckus last night, it seems!" Silence. It seemed that nobody was in the mood for delays. "Alright. I've talked to Tenenbaum, and it looks like the dose of Hypnotize isn't strong enough anymore, so we have to come to a decision."  
The crowd murmured fearfully and talked amongst themselves, the voices getting louder and louder.  
"Please, please," Thomas shouted above the noise, lowering his hands. As the crowd quietened, he straightened his tie nervously. "I'm sorry, I know this is difficult. We need to decide what to do with the Splicers. I'm asking this: do we want to kill them before they kill us, or do we want to wait while Tenenbaum comes up with a stronger solution? Yes, they're people that we once knew, people not too different to us, but can we afford to take that risk while we wait? I'll be putting two voting boxes at the front of the podium in a few minutes, vote wisely." John looked to his neighbor, who looked back at him with 'this is the world we live in now' expression on his face. What would be the right thing to do? Was the safety of hundreds of already-sane citizens more important that the lives of thousands others? He had lost friends and family to that damned drug.

In a single file, each person walked up to the box and voted, and it came to John. He hesitated, then slid his sheet of paper into the box marked "Wait". If need be, he would stand on the front line, holding the Splicers off if they found the complex.


	5. Security

**Chapter 5 - Barry **

Barry stood watch over the repair team as they worked on one of the trams outside Olympus Heights. It would be a great way to explore more of the city, and lord knows they need to. They were slowly running out of food.  
He turned from the tram to the other side of the Metro to where a Big Daddy was slowly raising large chunks of rubble with Telekinesis and threw a grenade at it. With a satisfied groan, the armoured man then started again with another pile of rocks. Barry smiled and shook it head. What kind of Rapture did they live in, where drugged up murderers and a Big Daddy were helping them rebuild?  
An sudden alarm sounded at the other end of the Metro, signalling that a Splicer was near. He whirled around and motioned for the repair team to run back to safe zone, nodding as one shouted and asked if they could take a Security Bot with them.  
Barry jumped down from the paying booth and started towards the sound of the alarm, getting his Hypnotise Plasmid ready. Throwing it at the Big Daddy as he passed, cocked his pistol and stopped. There was no Splicer at the gate. No body, only two Security Bots humming in the air aimlessly. Barry didn't move a muscle, trying to hear or feel something. Something was wrong, he was sure of it.  
The alarm clicked off, and the tin man behind him moaned and went back to work.  
Suddenly, he felt the air ripple around him and he spun to shoot, when the gun was knocked out of his hand and he felt a strange, lifting sensation and he was gone.

Barry vomited at his feet, his stomach heaving at the strange sensation of being teleported. He glared in disgust and fear at the man who had moved him who was spinning an empty EVE hypo in his long fingers: Sander Cohen.  
"I just want to say something," Barry managed to get out, his voice strained from his raw throat.  
Cohen's face lit up like a child and he dropped the hypo. "You're a fan, aren't you? Oh, goodie! The only real fans on the uncivilised side," his voice dropped to a loud whisper at this, "are those lumbering brutes. Of course, I get my fun out of them for a short while, but I soon tire of them."  
"I actually hated your records," Barry said, smiling as Cohen's face dropped and was replaced by a snarl.  
"I didn't grant you an audience with Sander Cohen to be rude!" He said hotly, straightening his tuxedo. "You all need me. You need art, music and greatness," Cohen raised his arms, as if listening to applause that wasn't there. His face was scarred, almost beyond recognition, which he tried to cover by plastering make-up to his face, which instead made him look like a clown from a horror flick.  
Realising that he wasn't going to get anywhere, Barry gave a large, false smile.  
"We could do with you, thinking about it now," he said thoughtfully, wracking his brain. How could he work this out?  
"As I tried to tell you," the musician said smugly. "I demand my old apartment. It was beautiful, you know. What do the people look like, that live there? I simply must be surrounded by visually pleasing subjects!"  
"They're all beautiful," Barry nodded quickly. "I'll go back and talk to the mayor if you let me, let him know to make your place fit for a king?"  
Cohen nodded absent-mindedly, running a hand over his cheekbone. "I'll have fans again, and more assistants," he was saying to himself and darted over to Barry.  
Barry opened his eyes, relieved to see he was back near the tram. He turned to Sander Cohen. "I'll be outside the gate at eight in the morning. Make sure you bring some of your friends along! The more the merrier."

The Metro clock gonged eight times above the nervous Clearers. There were three teams, all had their Incinerate! Plasmid and pistols at the ready.  
Barry looked behind him at the masked people, giving a quick nod and turned back to the front. Any minute now, Cohen's people would start appearing.  
As if on cue, twenty Splicers suddenly materialised out of red mist in front of them with Sander Cohen at the front. Each Splicer was holding a piece of Cohen's art, which was, of course, a plastered corpse.  
"Now!" Barry shouted, feeling the heat as fire and bullets hurtled past him.


	6. Houdini's Cure

**Chapter 6 - Thomas**

The mayor lay awake in his bed next to his sleeping wife, unable to get to sleep. Thomas remembered the angry and hysterical screams of the Splicers that Barry had alerted him to: he had been the back, surrounded by Security Bots.  
He finally wrenched himself out of bed and made his way to his desk and picked up the phone.

Tenenbaum sat on her couch, her grey hair tied tightly in a bun. Even at this late hour, she was smoking a long cigarette.  
"Can't sleep?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "I knew you would come to me, eventually."  
He wanted to say that even he didn't know he would come here, so how would she? But he decided to leave it. Instead, he sat in front of her with her notes on ADAM in his hand.  
"How far along are you on working on a cure?" He asked, pulling his robe tighter around himself. It was colder in Rapture than it was before, perhaps the heating was failing. It seemed there yet was another matter that required his attention.  
Brigid looked at him without expression, then blinked and spoke, "I have not found a general cure, but have found that I can perhaps help the disappearing Splicers."  
Thomas froze, blood rushing to his face. "How long have you known about this?" He asked in a low voice.  
"A few days, I am guessing," she told him, handing another sheet of notes over.  
"We just shot down twenty fucking Houdini Splicers!" Thomas roared, standing abruptly up. "You could think to tell me this sooner, you damned woman?"  
"I am damned," she said simply, her accent thick. "I did not tell you of this yet, as I am not yet sure it will work."  
"But there's a possibility?" She nodded in reply, and he put his head into his hands with a groan. "What have I done?"

Thomas walked through the deserted square, lost in thought. They had the Metro, Olympus Heights and most of Apollo Square cleared. In the morning, they will have cleared and secured Arcadia. Finally, the citizens could begin growing food and relax in the park. Now they needed to find the Farming Dome. Andrew Ryan hadn't told anyone where it was located, and the workers were Food Bots so people couldn't exactly question them.  
There was still, so much to be done. Maybe they could even capture a Houdini and, hopefully, cure it.


End file.
